The Fly Remake Happening with Sleight Director J.D. Dillard

2 years ago

After several years of rumors and speculation, 20th Century Fox is finally moving forward with a new remake of their 1958 sci-fi classic The Fly, which already got a well-received remake in 1986. The studio is in talks with filmmaker J.D. Dillard, whose breakout Sundance hit Sleight hits theaters next month, to direct this second remake and co-write the screenplay with his Sleight writing partner Alex Theurer. No production scedule has been set, and with J.D. Dillard and Alex Theurer already setting up another film called Sweetheart, this may not come to fruition right away.

Deadline broke the news that J.D. Dillard is in talks to direct and co-write the script, which is the first movement on this project in quite some time. Back in 2009, reports surfaced that David Cronenberg, who directed the original remake starring Jeff Goldblum, was coming back to direct a second take on the material. But that never moved forward. There were never any concrete updates on the project since then, but now the studio is seemingly ready to go with new filmmakers coming aboard.

David Cronenberg’s film was a remake of the 1958 sci-fi thriller of the same name starring Vincent Price, based on a short story published in the pages of Playboy way back in 1957. In the 1986 movie, Jeff Goldblum played Seth Brundle, a young scientist on the verge of creating “TelePods,” a machine that teleports a person from one TelePod to another. At the same time, he is falling for Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), a reporter helping him with, what they think is, the “story of the year.” But the only problem is, the TelePods won’t transport matter, and when they do, what happens isn’t a pretty sight. After Seth irons all the bugs out of the Pods, he uses the first human test subject: himself.

But a common housefly entered the Pod with him, and the machine spliced their DNA together. As Seth’s strength starts to increase along with his anger, the fly genes inside of him start to awaken and Seth begins an evolution from human to a horrific man/insect creature he calls BrundleFly. He can still find a cure, but what lengths will he go to cure himself before he turns into BrundleFly completely? The original movie also starred John Getz, Joy Boushel, Lesie Carlson, George Chuvalo, Michael Copeman, Carole Lazare and Shawn Hewitt, with director David Cronenberg even appearing on screen himself. The original movie spawned the 1989 sequel The Fly II, and there was also a five-issue The Fly comic book sequel that debuted in March 2015. It wasn’t announced whether this new take will reboot these characters, use the characters from the 1958 version, which itself spawned the sequels 1959’s Return of the Fly and 1965’s Curse of the Fly, or if the story will revolve around all new characters.

J.D. Dillard’s upcoming thriller Sleight had its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, with the film getting picked up for distribution by Jason Blum‘s Blumhouse Productions, with an April 28 release date set. J.D. Dillard is also teaming up with Blumhouse and writer Alex Theurer again for their next film Sweetheart, which has Kiersey Clemons (Dope, The Flash) attached to star. With a director and writer now set, we should hear more about The Fly remake in the near future.